Reversal of Fortune
by Gliblord
Summary: Yoruichi must teach Byakuya to free his mind, so to speak. He has unwittingly given her the tools to achieve that end. Her name is Hisana. She's a lowly commoner. Yoruichi licks her lips. Oh, this will be fun.


Disclaimer: All skepticism directed at my dubious claims of Bleach ownership will be met with gunfire. That is all.

**Reversal of Fortune**

It was a routine morning.

"I'll outrun you," Kuchiki swore, the barren expanse of desert already receding into the distance. Loops of limestone crumbled bitterly as the two figures built momentum. "I will outrun you!"

"That's nice," goaded Yoruichi, "but I can't hear you from over here! Quit jogging in place!"

What might have frustrated lesser shinigami instead tempered his resounding patience. Nothing would come between him and the noble…

"I know that look. That's the 'nothing will come between you and the reputation of the noble house of Kuchiki' look!"

"We have been spending too much time together," he riposted solemnly.

"This is not an official race between Heads of House, Byakuya. Let go of the bigger picture and seize the moment."

"Is this your advice as God of Flash?"

She looked back for a telltale second. "You can even write it in that notebook you carry. The one with the glitter. The one I liked."

"Please refrain from that kind of talk. We are now of equal stance."

"Well, Byaukya-bo," she shouted. "That's debatable!"

Byakuya, lagging far as he was, could still descry the horizon. "Shihouin-dono, your plan is unwise. Leading us out of Seireitei? Hoping to lose me in the riffraff?"

"We're here!"

Kuchiki spied his surroundings, which were the suburbs of the sixty-ninth Rukongai district. Creaky rotty pubs littered his sight, and everywhere the odor of sweat and meat stung the air. A midge or two buzzed about his sandals. A mangy whelp groveled in an alley corner. His hand wrapped reflexively 'round his scabbard, ready to spill marrow at a moment's prompting. He loathed the low places.

"Why did you bring us here?" he nearly raised his voice.

"There needs to be a reason for everything around you," she sighed, the gloss of her hair waving breezily. She was wearing it long again. "To achieve my level of shunpo, you need to relinquish the grudges and bygones that plague men to failure, to kill the nag in your gut and start fresh—in short, to reach enlightenment. I'm not saying you aren't a top notch shunpo user--you're definitely Gotei material--but you're also extremely uptight. I don't know how long we can keep this up if your outlook never changes."

Byakuya spared the bustling crowd a glimpse, turning to leave with a scoff.

He glimpsed... and left.

Glimpsed, and left…

Glimpsed.

The earth seemed to grow dim, and only one girl could explain why: the sparkling object breathing raggedly by the riverside.

"Hello! Byakuya! Anyone home?" She would have bonked him back to life if his headdress weren't so damn pointy. And fruity, gah. Who the hell had bought him such frivolous pomp? She would dearly like to meet the man, she had a gift wrapped for him in the form of five knuckles. It only served to make him more arrogant anyway, and never mind, she remembered with a sinking feeling—she had gotten it for him. Damn birthdays.

In his defense, Byakuya struggled valiantly with himself to meet the light of reason. Commoners were abject, beneath him--anonymously generated and likewise disposed of. They were the bowels of Soul Society, to be mentioned only when all other topics come exhausted and he is forced to discuss unpleasant matters.

Yet there she was, the way her hips and her button nose stood out in the crowd as mysteriously alluring as the melancholic sheen of the waterway.

It was strange. Byakuya was never one to drift off. He'd remained vigilant and reticent since Yoruichi took him in as her disciple (back then she would've taken accepted anyone else who got up and asked, as all it took was the very idea of apprenticeship to flatter her). "Oi, Byakuya? Say something, you know I like to be the center of-- Ah, I understand now," she nodded knowingly, line of sight trained on the target. "You scoundrel. You totally want to hit that, don't you?"

Hit that? By all the crimson ribbons of the starlit realm... Maybe.

"'Hit that'? Shihouin Yoruichi, have you lost your mind?"

"Yes, but don't dodge the subject. After all, it's not unusual to think a lady arousing. Recent studies on the matter suggest it might even be a predetermined response to naturally occurring stimuli."

"Why do you insist that I love this woman?" he asked. He would come to regret it.

"…When did I say love?"

In Kuchiki's opinion, the rest of the conversation unfolded rather predictably.

""You really do like her! Oh, this is the best! I couldn't have asked for it! Oh, and just in case you zone out again: Love love love love love love love love love love love."

There went that smile of hers again, bent cruelly as an assassin. There went several weeks he'd hoped could be peaceful for a change. That smile, decider and deliverer, judge and jury. He could plan his every day according to her fluctuating moods. For example, he knew a frown on her face was generally bad news. A grin, however, was many times worse.

"Quiet!" he snapped, but by the time he dipped to see they had been spotted, Yoruichi'd already zipped over and back.

"Her name's Hisana, single white female, professional thief. And by the looks of it, this is her cooling down after a lengthy and arduous heist."

"I am at no level the slightest bit interested in her," he articulated, but the way his eyes kept drifting wasn't lost on her.

"Doubt it," she chimed. She was enjoying it too much.

"I seek no romantic entanglements to complicate my everyday obligations."

"Not likely."

"Shiba and Shihouin may turn a blind eye to the nature of the company they keep, but I shall not likewise plummet."

"Nuh-uh."

"Kuchiki does not allow vagabonds and miscreants through the hallowed gates of adoption."

"Wouldn't count on it."

"I am bound to celibacy."

"My first condition, which I remember enumerating very strictly, was about lying: Don't."

"Kindly cease at once what you are attempting. You cannot so infuriate me."

"Silly Byakuya, you're an open book to me. I can gauge your infatuation by the altitude of your eyebrow. So far: somewhere between the carriage and the engagement ring."

Byakuya's eyebrow scrunched back to a jut, immediately implicating him. "There are plenty of suitors whose charm and means more readily match mine."

"Mmm, your words say no but that left eye of yours that keeps drifting towards the girl's direction begs to differ. Tell me what she isn't doing if you're so innocent."

"I am two hundred years too old to fall for that trick."

"Glad I don't have to teach you the fundamentals of lovemaking then. 'Hisana! Let not others tear us apart!'" she mimed, blushing and hugging herself, "'Oh, Hisana!, how tender and loving your embrace! Oh Hisana, how your lashes beat to the pulse of the vernal eclipse! And how snug be thy snatch--"

"Enough! I will prove to you there is nothing between us!"

"Already referring to yourselves as 'us'? Byakuyabo, what am I going to do with you? You're like a helpless jackal pup, stumbling out of your den and experiencing the wild for the first time."

"I said, enough!" he shouted, tottering on the cusp of assailing her. There ringed in this response a venom which was impossible to resist milking for all its worth.

"Denial is the first step towards acceptance, and only when we can accept is happiness truly within reach. This, my friend, is the greatest pearl in my admittedly tremendous arsenal; spend it wisely."

And with a whirl she was far beyond the fiefscape.

Even Kuchiki could appreciate such an amazing feat of speed. In fact, it took a second or two to jolt back into awareness. His anger flooded back like Aquarius had gone berserk emptying in him his ragevessels, and his feet found a fleetness only adrenaline could dole, (or whatever amounted to hormones among spirit entities).

His senpai, however, was walking on air. That girl was just the ticket she needed to help train him. She was a wild card, an extraneous variable in Byakuya's shallow layout of Soul Society, something he'd automatically abhor. But she could see in the number of flash steps it took him to catch up to her—fewer than ever before—that she had finally found something to knock some wonder into that noggin of his.

"Way of Binding 61!"

Yoruichi tripped and fell. Shards sank hotly into her flesh. She was trapped in the middle of a sloping quarry, a ring of demon magic fastening her to the abrupt bed of rock. It took a moment to realize her legs were numb. A sandy figure loomed above her, sandals crunching against the gravel louder and louder... She gurgled, struggling in her disbelief to ascertain a shape in the shadows that didn't seem impossibly familiar... No way he could have reared in close enough proximity to cast it.

It pulled a blade from the shade, and it was as if a chariot had burst through the clouds. Stony radiation baked the earth, producing not warmth but blank, sizzling silence. "Chire," whispered the rosy gales, each tiny petal reflecting the swordsman's austere countenance.

Kuchiki.

"Shihouin Yoruichi..." A thousand razors. Curled lips. "Who is smiling now?"

A tune of metal strummed her demise.

"I'm sorry," she spat, dissolving the ring with a casual shrug as her body brimmed with light. "I let you gain false hope."

Byakuya averted his eyes. He had seen her naked before, but nothing like this. Could it be?

Her reiatsu blotted the sun like a wayward angel, and he was confident he'd assumed correctly.

---

"Flash...cry."

"Hats off," said a female. "First words, ya deduced it."

It was dry. His eyes felt welded shut. His lungs hitched like a newborn's, and he awoke with a start.

"Gotta hand it to you, middle of a wasteland and still ya manage to set your head peacefully."

"Wa..water."

Yoruichi had the canteen ready. "Boy, you put up a helluva fight, I'll tell you right now. I mean, I still schooled you, of course, but rest assured I broke a sweat or two." Taking a hold of her hand, he was pulled up and allowed to take a minute.

Amazing... not once in that sentence did she note how debilitated he looked or otherwise belittle him. And that smile, he couldn't place it... there was none of the normal spite... it seemed almost sympathetic.

"Now I'm going to tell you exactly why you lost," she continued, and all the dismay came rushing back in an oddly nostalgic fashion. "You're too rigid. Your zanpakuto's got the right idea--it's strong and flexible. There's only so much I can teach you if you don't strive to work on your flaws. Take Soul Society, for instance. Lush and stable as it may be, it is basically a graveyard. Every little effort to improve conditions in one area will help ameliorate the whole. That's why I took you to Rukongai--I'd decided on the onset of this training session to drag you out of your hole and escort you to the slums, partially since I knew it was time to step your tutoring up a bit, but mostly because I was bored.

"What I didn't count on was that beggar girl of yours. I instantly figured your infatuation into my equation. So here we are, at long last. Sure there isn't something you want to tell me about her?"

"I... she... we... yes," he admitted.

"The first step's always the lightest," she soothed, patting him on the head. She had removed his kenseikan, and was now braiding his hair. "You know, I'm actually quite attracted to men who resist authority."

"Yoruichi...san" he gasped, ears unbelieving. "What are you doing?"

Her robes cascaded down her curves, kicking up arid motes of dust that Byakuya could smell--one brazen foot had slammed him in the chest, sending him hurtling to the sand.

"Ready to take another step?" she purred, pouncing.

It was not such a routine afternoon.


End file.
